VDOT and the Driveway Culvert
There’s a shallow drainage ditch running along the road in front of my house. It’s in the right-of-way, so the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) has control of it. I contacted VDOT to find out what I had to do to install a driveway and was told I needed a 15 inch x 20 foot culvert pipe in the ditch. I had to buy the pipe but VDOT would install it.
Guess how many VDOT employees it takes to install one pipe (it’s plastic and relatively easy to move around) and cover it with some gravel. The answer is 7 (yes, seven). And 3 (count ‘em … three) dump trucks and a huge Gradall excavator. That’s probably a half million bucks worth of heavy construction equipment.
It took them an hour and fifteen minutes to do a job I could’ve completed by myself with a shovel and a wheelbarrow in a half hour. The next time Virginia’s politicos complain about the “funding crisis for transportation” (their favorite topic), I’m going to break something.
1 comment April 14th, 2006
